


Merely to Know

by printers_devil



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Bondage, Brief Amputation Mention, F/M, Fantastical Felannie Week (Fire Emblem), Felannie Week (Fire Emblem), Fire Emblem: Three Houses Black Eagles Route, Healing, Magical Bondage, Oral Sex, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Semi-Public Sex, Teaching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:07:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23578171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/printers_devil/pseuds/printers_devil
Summary: Annette has been teaching Felix reason magic for a while. When he asks her to show him the basics of healing, however, they both find out a little something new about themselves.Written for Fantastical Felannie Week.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 2
Kudos: 74
Collections: FantasyFelannieWeek2020





	Merely to Know

**Author's Note:**

> For day 7 of [Felannie Week 2020](https://twitter.com/crumbsandyums/status/1248468050950553600?s=20): "disaster/discovery/adventure." I'd say I went two for three on that one. Whew, a little late, but not too late. Thanks to the organizers.
> 
> In any route that isn't Azure Moon, their paired ending is that they become professors at the Officer's Academy together, which is super cute, they are so cute together! So I've written this as them being stranded in Crimson Flower. This gets into some "war: bad" before it gets into the fun sex stuff. 

Manuela was away for the afternoon, attached to one of Edelgard's scouting missions or another: as a guest of the Empire _,_ Annette wasn't privy to Edelgard's plans. Mercedes technically had charge of the infirmary, but she'd said _Oh, Annie, you can cover for me, can't you?_ So here Annette was, stuck here on a perfectly nice afternoon, using the privacy to give Felix a lesson in faith magic.

Of all the people Felix could have asked tutor him in magic, he'd chosen _her_ , Annette Fantine Dominic: not the professor, who was scary with a fire spell; not creepy Hubert, who was terrifying in battle; and not Mercedes, who could heal and fight with equal ease. It had taken Annette a week to relax and realize that he was serious about it—about her.

"Leather?" Felix asked, looking at the large, folded sheet of it lying on the infirmary bed.

"Our magic can't tell the difference between living flesh and dead flesh!" Annette said, knowing that she probably sounded deranged. "No matter how the flesh has been treated, the magic just does what you tell it to, as long as you tell it right. It's less dangerous than cutting a person and trying to practice on them." It was also less dangerous than stealing corpses from Fhirdiad crematories, but Felix didn't need to know just how the School of Sorcery really ran its faith magic classes. "This was mine, from when I was at school. Not this school. The other one. You know."

Felix unbuckled his sword belt and laid it on the worktable. Annette watched him from the corner of her eyes as she unfolded the leather sheet. Even the simplest thing Felix did was graceful, but Annette could never tell him that. Even after so long, even braced as she was for him to make fun of silly she was, she always felt fluttery when she looked at him. But she was a mage first right now, and he was expecting her to teach him how to heal.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, looking expectantly up at her. "How do we start?"

"Give me a knife," she said.

He took the dagger off of his belt and gave it to her without hesitation. It was pretty _and_ functional, with sapphires set into the crossguard and the Crest of Fraldarius etched on the pommel. Annette hadn't thought that Felix would keep a work of art on him, but now that she thought about it, she didn't know much about him other than the sword stuff, the dead brother stuff, and the "I hate Dimitri so much that I'm fighting for the Empire against Faerghus" stuff, really. Annette and Mercedes had joined the Black Eagles because the professor had asked them to, and fought with them because Edelgard had said a lot of very persuasive stuff about the Church of Seiros, and where else were they going to go now? Mercie had stayed around for her creepy brother, and Annette had stayed for Mercie.

She made some long cuts into the leather: some long, some short, some ragged and some clean. This was nothing like a real wound, but it was good enough to give him the fundamentals. She took Felix through the basics, and warned him against trying to heal himself unless the situation was dire: you couldn't fill a glass with the water that was already inside it. Sitting on a stool next to the infirmary bed, he listened with a focus she knew he reserved only for opponents on the training grounds.

And the stool was low enough that they were the same height. Some of her classmates had gotten taller, but Annette was stuck at _this_ height. She swore she'd come up to Felix's chin when they were at the Academy, but in the past five years he'd put on a few more centimeters.

She performed a basic healing on each of her cuts, then re-cut the leather so Felix could try for himself. He was a good listener, and he picked stuff up quickly. For all that he made swordplay look easy, he worked hard every day, just like she did. He was only good at two spells for attacking, but he didn't want to be a fighting mage, so he didn't need to be flexible, only surprising.

"Now, in real life, it's much more difficult than this," Annette said, watching him struggle with the long, clean cut she'd made. "There's blood and muscle underneath, but I think bone is the worst, Especially if you have to...."

"To what?" Felix said, looking across the bed at her.

"Amputate," Annette said, playing with a loose string on one of her robes. Felix's hands had been glowing, and she could tell he was straining to keep the spell under control; it was easy to put too much power into it, and with too much power, and you could cause wild, uncontrolled growth on living flesh. The magic sputtered out. "Try one more time to finish that. Don't force it!"

He didn't question her. He just... did what she said, gave it one more shot, closed the cut cleanly. He packed the sheet of leather away neatly and put it in her bag. Then he made his _I'm super interested in what you're saying but I would never say out loud that I'm super interested, so please keep talking so I don't have to say it_ noise.

"There's a spell they use in the field hospitals, to restrain soldiers who can't stop thrashing and to make their bodies numb. And then"—she made a slicing motion with her hand—"off it goes."

"You've had to do that? Amputate?" said Felix.

"Um, once or twice. I cast the binding spell, I didn't do the amputation."

It had been six times in one day, in the aftermath of the battle to take the great bridge at Myrddin. She'd come out intact, and they'd needed anyone who could so much as unbruise an apple to take care of all the wounded. She could still smell the burning flesh. There was a reason the professor used her on the battlefield rather than keeping her behind the battle lines as a healer: she didn't have the stomach for it, not like Mercedes did. Mercedes _cared,_ but when she was in the tents among the wounded, she was like a different person. Annette could only ever be herself. If she could be more... but no matter how hard she studied, she couldn't beat her limitations.

Annette felt a weight on her shoulder, and it was Felix, putting his hand there. She covered that hand with hers, squeezing it, and they stood there for a time, in silence together.

"Show me," he said at last, lying down on the infirmary bed. "I want to see how it works."

He looked sparsely-built standing up, slender, even, but on his back she could see how broad he was. His clothes were cleverly cut, was all. He was made of muscle.

"Really?" Annette asked.

He rolled his eyes. "This could be useful in battle. I could immobilize an enemy, and they wouldn't realize what was happening until my blade was—"

"Just checking!" she interjected, before he could go into raptures about the thrill of crossing swords. "This isn't the kind of thing I do for fun." And besides, in battle, mages rarely fought one-on-one at close range. They had support, back-up, people with large shields to stand in front of them.

Before he could think twice, she cast the spell. It was simple, and only required a wave of the hand, there wasn't even any need to channel the excess magical energy afterward. It barely even had a physical presence in the world. If she were to look at Felix's body out of the corner of her eye, she would have seen a faint disturbance in the air, a bending of light that kept him bound to the bed. She hadn't made him numb, though, there was no need for that.

And as she watched, Felix struggled against it. He was systematic about it. He tested his shoulders first, then his arms. His hips couldn't move, either, nor his sword-callused hands, nor his long, lean thighs. He even tried his ankles. Annette sat on his stool and watched the whole thing. It was weird to cast this spell when no one around her was screaming.

"I told you you couldn't get out of it," Annette said, watching him fight.

"This is good," said Felix. He smiled up at her, one of his rare, genuinely happy smiles. She usually only saw those when he was making fun of her songs. "Damn. You have to show me how to do this."

"Is it better than Thoron?" she asked. He snorted. He liked Thoron best out of all the spells she'd showed him, and practiced it like he practiced with the sword. He was cute, wrinkling his nose in concentration as he tried to get the gesture and the posture just right... the excited look he gave her when he hit a metal practice dummy reminded her of herself when she'd still thought magic was fun, before it had become a way to get to Garreg Mach and find her father.

On the bed, Felix kept struggling. Annette watched him for a second, and then got bored and got up to start re-folding the sheets. She was technically in charge of the infirmary right now, after all, she should do some work and not mess around with Felix. Manuela just stuffed all the linen onto a shelf without organizing it, and this was the exact kind of task she could sing her way through. _Folding laundry feels so nice! Good white linen, clean as ice! Make them neat and put them back..._ The song bubbled up in her, but she couldn't sing it in front of Felix.

And because it was her spell he was working on, she could feel Felix behind her reaching out with his magical senses, trying to test her work, unravel it. He wasn't anywhere near good enough for that yet: he didn't have a theoretical grounding in magic beyond what everyone learned in the first few months at the Officer's Academy, and he wasn't interested in theory anyway. Still, there was the possibility that he might figure it out. It was supposed to hold down people who were out of their minds with pain, not fully aware, fully awake people.

"I can let you up if you want," Annette said, folding the last pillowcase and setting it in the cabinet. That was enough for now. She'd send Felix for lunch—he did things like that for her sometimes—and finish the rest of the folding later.

"This is nice," said Felix. " I don't mind it."

"Suit yourself," she replied. It was time for a break, anyway; she sat down on the bed next to his bound form. He'd stopped struggling—he did look relaxed right now, more relaxed than she'd ever seen him. At peace, even. A strand of hair had fallen over his nose, and she brushed it out of the way. "Thanks for keeping me company," she said. "I'm glad you're here."

If she hadn't had him magically tied to the bed, she never would have dared stroke his forehead, but she did.

"You're the one teaching me." Felix swallowed visibly. He looked as though he—big, scary Felix!—was getting up the courage to say something to her. "And besides... there's only three of us from Faerghus here. We're sticking together."

"You have other friends," Annette protested. He hadn't told her to stop, so she ran her hand over his forehead again, down the side of his face. His eyes fluttered shut, sweetly, under her touch.

"I have you and Mercedes," he said. "Who else am I going to talk to, Caspar? _Ferdinand?"_

"No one talks to Ferdinand. Ferdinand just sort of talks at you until he gets distracted and walks away," Annette said. Caspar couldn't keep two thoughts in his head at the same time, but he was sweet. Loud, but sweet. "Dorothea and Petra are nice."

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah," she said. She did. People were nice to Mercedes because she was a healer and because her brother was _the actual Death Knight_ , but Annette and Felix were still from the wrong side of the border. They were a pair of traitors, disowned by their houses, with nothing but their skills, their education, and their Crests, the latter of which wouldn't even matter when Edelgard won— _when_ Edelgard won, because she was going to win, she had to, or this would all have been for nothing.

"Sitting like that can't be comfortable," Felix said. "Just lay down."

Annette hesitated, but she couldn't think of any reason not to. She arranged her body awkwardly around his immobile form, adjusting his arm so that she could tuck into him and rest her head on his shoulder. "I don't want to fight my old friends," she said. "If Mercedes had decided to go back to the Kingdom... I don't know what I would have done."

"I'm going to feel bad if I have to fight Ingrid," Felix admitted. "Sylvain and the prince... I'm going to feel less bad about them, but I wish Ingrid was here with us."

Pressed against his body like this, his low voice ran through her. It was nice. She could imagine herself falling asleep like this with him in a real bed while he talked to her.

They lay there quietly for a while. No one came into the infirmary to bother them. A nice breeze blew through the window, making the curtains dance; footsteps passed outside, a pair of scholars talking about repairs to the library. She felt herself relax: they were a long way away from invading the Kingdom proper. Fódlan was big. It was unlikely that she would ever see her father again, and at this point, that was how she liked it. Annette moved in closer to Felix, laying half on top of him, and remembered, suddenly, that her spell was _still_ holding him down. "Want me to let you up now?" she asked.

"You mean you're finally going to release your helpless captive?" Felix said. There was a laugh in his voice, but it was different now: he wasn't mocking her, it sounded intimate. They _were_ friends.

"Maybe I won't!" Annette said, plucking up her courage. She sat up and put her hand on his chest, pressing him down into the bed. "I'm a scary Imperial soldier now! I've got you in my clutches, Felix Hugo Fraldarius."

"What a good Hubert impression," Felix said dryly.

"Don't say that," she said. "He's probably listening to us _right now_ for signs of disloyalty to Emperor Edelgard."

"You're right, we're going to end up in his torture dungeon."

" _We're_ not going to end up in the dungeon." Annette crossed her arms over her chest, turning her nose up at him. " _I'm_ turning you in to him as soon as he starts asking questions."

They shared a laugh at that. Felix's laughs were so rare, and she hoarded the memory of every one of them. His lips were parted as he looked up at her; he had a nice mouth. This wasn't the first time she'd noticed it, but it _felt_ as though it was the first time: like when she finally got the hang of a new spell. It was the difference between _knowing_ and _mastery,_ when the whole world realigned itself.

_Oh, for the Goddess's sake, Annette, it's not like that at all. You're being silly. You just want to kiss him._

She drew up her skirts and clambered on top of him, gracelessly. She slid her hands down his chest, appreciating his body. He felt good under her, narrow hips, a taut chest.

"Oh," she said, when she settled over his groin. "Hi."

Felix's ears turned pink. "It's from the spell," he said, and swallowed, and now his whole face was red. "It's... relaxing to get held down like this. Listen, are you going to kiss me or what—"

Annette silenced him with her mouth. His lips parted eagerly, inviting her in, and she leaned over him, lying fully atop him. He smelled like leather, like cool steel, and she drank him in gladly. Her whole body thrummed with the power, from the pulse in her neck to the pulse between her legs: all that wonderful, wonderful strength of his didn't matter one bit against her magic.

As she deepened the kiss, sliding her tongue into his mouth, he made a desperate noise and renewed his struggles against the spell. It only brought the hardness between his legs against her, and she moved with him, only a few flimsy layers of fabric separating her from his cock. On the magical level, he was testing the spell in earnest, but not well. Her work was sound. He was in her clutches. She relaxed into the easy rhythm of the kiss and let her hands wander over places she'd only thought about. The side of his neck, which was taut with strain. Up under his shirt, to touch his bare, scarred skin.

Oh, there was a thought. Annette sat up and undid his coat, laid it open, shoved up his shirt. She'd seen him half-naked before. She knew the map of his skin already, exactly which wounds she'd closed up herself, hastily, in which battles.

"Annette," Felix said, his voice shaky. He thrust up weakly against her, as much as the spell would allow. "Annette, I want to touch you."

"Too bad!" she said, lowering her mouth to his chest. She licked his flesh, and he grunted. She bit him, and he _moaned_. She felt an answering throb between her legs: she ached for him, too. She kissed and bit her way across his chest, glorying in how serious, capable, controlled Felix had to stifle his noises when she took his nipple into her mouth.

She felt something in the back corner of her awareness snap, and then Felix’s arms were around her, dragging her back up to kiss her. She found herself giggling with delight. His hands were knotted and tangled in her hair, roaming down her back, squeezing her rear.

When he finally let her up for air, Annette said,“How did you....”

“I’ve been studying,” he replied. He pressed short, sipping kisses to her lips, teasing her, resisting her efforts to make the kiss deeper. She murmured his name against his mouth, frustrated, and felt him smile against her.

“I want you to take this off,” she whispered, tugging at the hem of his shirt. Quiet, they had to be quiet. Someone could come in at any second. Felix nodded and did as she asked, sitting up to slide his coat and shirt off.

She leaned back in his lap to look at him, truly look at him. From a distance, he was impressive, up close, he was beautiful.

“I thought you'd hate me, after what I said, after... a lot of the things I've said,” Felix was saying, his voice fervent. “I meant it, what I said about being your captive. I...” He ran a finger up her bared thigh, turned his gaze toward the ceiling, like he was praying. “I like spending time with you.”

“Yeah?” Annette said, and her voice came out as a squeak. As he’d spoken, his hand moved farther up her thigh, so that he was touching her through her underthings, questioning. Her eyes met his pale brown ones, and she nodded frantically: yes, yes, this was all she'd ever wanted.

Annette had done this before: with fellow students, with soldiers who didn't know who she was, with nobles looking for an heiress with a Crest, and it had been all right. It had not _realigned her world_. When Felix touched her, the pleasure was shocking. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him into a long, slow kiss as he worked her between her legs, patiently, methodically. Her entire body was throbbing; her hands ran up and down his muscular back almost of their own accord, tracing his vertebrae, feeling his tremble at her touch as she trembled at his. When she came, her nails bit into his skin, and she pressed her forehead into his shoulder to muffle her moans.

She slumped against him as she came down from her high. When she looked up at Felix, he stared down at her like she'd hung the moon. "You liked that," he said, sounding baffled for some reason she could not fathom.

"Of course I liked that!" Annette said. She wanted to babble, and she gave in to the urge: "You were... good. Really good! I'm glad we did this. Glad we're _doing_ this, that is. With each other."

With one finger, she pushed him back down onto his back. He was still very hard, and when she undid the front of his trousers, he let out a needy little sigh that sang through her blood. His cock was thick in her hands, and, fascinated by it, she wrapped both of her hands around it, stroked it, ran her thumb over the head. He groaned for her, and she hummed happily. "What do you want me to do?" she asked.

"Use your mouth," he ground out. "Please, Annette—"

A loud voice rang out in the hallway and they both froze, but for Annette's hand still stroking him. It sounded like Caspar, so it probably was, which meant the other, whispery voice was Linhardt. They paused outside of the infirmary, and then Linhardt said something, and they moved on. Annette exhaled, and before Felix could recover she settled down in between his legs to take him into her mouth. His hands touched the top of her head. On a hunch, she pulled off of him and shook her head. "No," she said softly, in case Caspar and Linhardt were still near enough to hear, "keep your hands on the bed."

And sure enough, he put his hands down at his sides immediately, bunching them up into fists. It didn't take long, and Annette was good at this, anyway—when he came, she took him in the back of her throat, swallowing him neatly and without any mess. He was panting under her, and it felt nice when he forgot what she'd told him to do and stroked her face, over her forehead, around the delicate shells of her ears.

"Thanks," he said, when she climbed up his body and settled into his arms.

"You're welcome," Annette replied. It didn't seem

"Some other time," Felix said, "you should cast that spell again."

"Yeah?"

"And do whatever you want with me. I'd like that." He sounded resolute, but that was just how his voice was. He looked away from her, at the wall, and bit his lower lip. Probably no one had ever thought of Felix as cute, but he was cute like this. And because he was cute, she leaned over him and kissed his cheek, his forehead, his nose, until he grumbled with irritation.

When she slid off of him to stand on her own and rearrange her clothes, fix her hair, she found that her legs were a little unsteady. Felix was watching her, his cock still out, leaning on his side on the bed to watch her, rapt with even the tiniest thing she did. No one had ever looked at her like that. Most people thought she was good with a wind spell but a little bit silly, and they thought she couldn't tell. Most people thought Felix was boring, humorless, and weird. She knew better.

The door to the infirmary slammed open. Manuela stood in the doorway, wearing the crimson uniform of an Imperial mage, shouldering off a pack onto the floor and kicking off her boots. She stopped short when she saw Annette; out of the corner of her eye, Annette glimpsed Felix pulling the blanket over his lap. Manuela went to the table in the middle of the room and sat down in one of the chairs, kicking her feet up on it. She seemed frustrated about something, but that wasn't Annette's problem.

"Oh, Annette. Mercedes was supposed to be here," Manuela said, disapproving.

"Mercie asked me to cover for her, I don't know why. I was examining Felix here, Professor Manuela!" Annette said. "He got hurt in training, and he wanted me to check to make sure everything was in order. I'm not an expert in healing magic like you, but I think I did all right patching him up." She kept going in this vein for a few more minutes, enough time for Felix to discreetly put his cock away and put his shirt back on. "But now that you're here, we'll be on our way!"

And so they were on their way. Felix put an arm around her shoulder as they went, and she nestled gladly into his side. "My room?" she murmured, and he nodded. After infirmary duty, she had a free afternoon. They could learn all kinds of things in an afternoon.


End file.
